


inhibited, limited (the face of the future)

by CycloneRachel



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Love Confessions, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25832368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CycloneRachel/pseuds/CycloneRachel
Summary: prompt from tumblr user bluerose512: Karadox, please - “I love you. I knew it the moment I met you. I’m sorry it took me so long to catch up.”
Relationships: Kara Danvers & Querl Dox, Kara Danvers/Querl Dox
Comments: 12
Kudos: 15





	inhibited, limited (the face of the future)

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends!
> 
> so I know I've covered post-season 5 finale Brainy a few times here, especially him and Kara, but really that's probably the thing I'm most looking forward to seeing explored in the beginning of season 6 (like how he recovers, how the Super-friends are going to react, what this does to his relationships with all of them, etc.). So I'm just going through all the possibilities here, and I hope that you all like them.
> 
> also parts of Brainy's backstory here come from the fic "The Bottled Mind", which I may or may not have mentioned before, by my good friend Elektra! I love you Elektra, you're the best and such a good writer.

Querl has often imagined what it might be like to be uninhibited.

Many times, in the past twenty-three years, he’s considered taking them off- when there is an especially difficult problem, in either century he’s called home, or when he has been ostracized by his fellow Coluans, or even in social situations he doesn’t understand, just to name a few. And each time he has weighed the benefits and disadvantages of such an act in his mind- removing them would certainly help him, or put an end to how others treat him, and it’s certainly something he wants.

But on the other hand, Querl still remembers his father’s reaction when Querl demanded his planet back, the raw anger he felt towards his father then. The pride on his mother’s face when she looked at him, realized that this was truly her son, the heir to the Brainiac line- and how much his father hadn’t wanted that to happen, making sure then that he would never feel such things again.

How he could, if the inhibitors were taken off, and something happened to trigger his temper.

Did he really trust himself that little, that he couldn’t regulate his emotions as an adult? Could he really risk his friends’ lives, exposing them to his true self? Would he be even worse, if he took them off now? What were the side effects of having them on for as long as he had?

He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t. He didn’t know. He didn’t _know_ -

So he always tried to overcome. Always pushed towards being better, doing better, the inhibitors mocking him when he looked at his exhausted, but safe face in the mirror.

_Better than being free and dangerous. Better to be trustworthy, than like the rest of my family._

It was a lesson he learned after acting out in spite of the inhibitors, and being coerced into joining his mother, especially necessary when in the Legion.

(With them, he _had_ to be the good Brainiac- upholding that image, of someone truly trying to do good and redeem themselves. And he couldn’t do that without the inhibitors.)

That was what he thought, at least, until a year and a half after he began to live in the twenty-first century- after the Crisis.

In his time growing up on Colu, he had always been confronted by “perfect” Coluans- those who didn’t have to have inhibitors forced on them because their parents trusted them enough. Those who could safely take part in the collective, using its knowledge, without fear that their mind might poison it. Those who mocked him, knowing exactly who he was and why he was different, taking solace in the fact that they weren’t.

(He tried not to hate them. He even tried to be on his best behavior, hoping someday that his father might see the error in his ways, and take the inhibitors off- perhaps within a year or two, or when Querl was done with school, or came of age.)

(That day never came, and his hope for that ended when he found his father dead in his own house, and he hadn’t been able to do anything about it)

He had never before, though, met perfect versions of himself- and that was what he thought they were, when he met them. Uninhibited, lording it over him, not knowing how lucky they were because their versions of his parents understood them better. They acted like they weren’t judging him, but he knew the truth. They were just like every other Coluan he’d come into contact with, everyone who knew what the inhibitors really meant and acted differently towards him because of it.

They pitied him, and he resented them, resented that he couldn’t have come from a universe like theirs, where he could have reached his full potential, didn’t feel a constant pressure on top of the one he had just living with his last name and title.

But… Kara, _Supergirl_ , changed all of that. Her perspective, once he’d opened up to her with his story… it was like magic, to him. She trusted him, even with what little she really knew, and he felt comforted by that gesture. She was warm to him, she always had been, and when his communication with others he’d worked with in his second home century wasn’t the best, they had always understood one another.

And so it was now.

He’d once said that she was stronger than any other Legionnaire, and he had faith in her (only hoping that he could be a fraction as strong). And though he’d doubted their connection other than as coworkers, he now knew that she had faith in him, just as much.

There was no way, then, that Querl would let her down, and with her words echoing in his mind- as well as those of his doppelgangers, who seemed to want the best for him despite behaving as though they didn’t initially- he finally removed his inhibitors.

And when he does, he feels the change- he’s stronger, his mind is clear, just to begin with. But he can’t dwell on it, not until after the battle, when he meets with his doppelgangers and they give up their life projectors to him, willing to sacrifice their physical forms and become one with the collective.

Once they do, he feels them strengthening him- but more than that, is able to access their memories as well, see the Earths they came from.

(Understands that just because they didn’t seem inhibited, didn’t mean they were free of problems- they were still Brainiacs 5, still bore his title, and they had gone through so much more loss.

But he would succeed where they failed, be a Brainiac 5 worthy of admiration, and once he did, everything would be alright again.

He hoped)

But with those memories comes something he didn’t expect- he sees the doppelganger with the ponytail and force-field belt snuggled up with his Kara, wearing a slightly different outfit from the ones he’s known her to have. He accesses all manner of their happy moments, hoping he isn’t being too intrusive (refraining from looking at the memories of their being intimate), and again is jealous- wishes his inhibitors hadn’t prevented him from having successful relationships.

He sees, as well, his female doppelganger- she too has a successful relationship, is happy with the woman she married just as she’d told him- and begins considering the partnerships he has had, in both the centuries he has lived in.

And over the course of the months he has to work for Lex to defeat Leviathan, he holds those memories in his mind, telling himself he will think on them again when the time is right, that he has to focus on what he must do right now. Anything else is negotiable.

But once he is almost killed, and brought back, sees that Kara has devoted so much of her time to caring for him, has cared for him all along even when she is busy or otherwise occupied, he has to act on it.

Even if there are risks, like when he was inhibited, he’s free to take them now. Wants to take them, when he might not have much time left as it is, and won’t let those words go unspoken.

So, once they are alone, he tells her.

“I love you.” He says. “I knew it the moment I met you. I’m sorry it took me so long to catch up.”


End file.
